One of the first attempts at modelling rhythmic reflexes in infants with a distinct central disruption of motor functions in children was the method developed in 1954 by Tample Fay, an American kinesitherapist. Essentially, this method represented passive modelling of a walking stereotype, carried out by professionals (Glenn Doman, “What to do About your Brain Damage Child”, 2007, ISNB 9789984392363, pp. 37-38). Three personnel members worked with the child simultaneously: one of them bending the child's legs and arms on the right side, another one unbending them on the left side, and the third one turning the child's head to the right and to the left. Manipulation of an adult required participation of five personnel members (one person for turning the patient's head, and one person for manipulating each extremity). It is obvious that this method requires much organising.
Progress of kinesitherapy in theory and practice brought about the use of elastic rubber pulls, suspensions with pullies and counterweights, and gliding surfaces to counterbalance the weight of a particular part of the patient's body (V. L. Naidin, “Rehabilitation of Neurosurgical Patients with Motor Deficiencies”, Moscow: “Medicine”, 1972, pp. 216-217), to enable the patient to do voluntary movements when a small amount of physical force to facilitate that movement. Using physical force, which is less than the weight of the part of the body, these methods can be useful in the training of movements.
One of the drawbacks of the methods available is their high demand on medical personnel, lack of automation and the absence of an easy way to assess their effectiveness.
The feature that is a good indicator of the technical level of the available rehabilitation equipment is the fact that it usually includes some support structures (three-dimension frames, bases, vertical posts) fixed to the floor, a wall or the ceiling, some weights to counterbalance the patient's body, and mechanisms and such assemblies (components) as hydro- or pneumatic pillows to tuck under the patient, with controlled pressure inside the pillow as in the following patent: RU, 2422123, C2, A61H1/00, published on 27 Jun. 2011).
There exists a swimming apparatus (Tza-Pei Grace Chen, Yuichiro Kinoshita Sidney Fels, Ashley Gadd et al., Swimming across the Pacific: A Virtual Swimming Interface Proposal for SIGGRAPH 2004 Emerging Technology), which includes a wooden frame (a shell), upper and lower horizontal beams, static cords dressed over pulleys attached to a beam and fixed with cords and carbines to a suspension of delta-plane kind, used to support the patient's shoulders and hips. Cords dressed over the pulleys mounted on the top beam and over the other pair of pulleys mounted on the lower beam, are provided for every ankle. The cords are attached to sandbags, which act as a counterweight to the swimmer's legs. Balance this apparatus is designed for virtual swimming: the swimmer's body parts are balanced by counterweights.
This apparatus is not very adaptive to different application conditions: a set of counterweights must be assembled and the entire ‘client-apparatus’ system must be set to a working regime for each individual patient. Also, to make a leg or an arm move, twice as much effort must be applied to overcome the stationary state of a double weight. This design is considerably restricted in its ability to stimulate different parts of the participant's body, because a body can only be rotated around its own axis, and the legs can only move in the vertical plane and only by applying force because there is no drive.
The prototype (closest prior art) of the proposed method and equipment is found in the inventions entitled “A Method and Equipment for Biomechanical Stimulation of Muscles and Rehabilitation of Motor Functions” (RU 2184517, C2, A61H1/00, published on 10 Jul. 2002). This method has the patient's body placed into a home position first: their head, body, legs and arms as well as toes and fingers, then assigns forced movements for these parts with a rehabilitation exercise master program software. The individual patient's maximum allowed values of physiological parameters: heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, body temperature are measured a-priori. Then, as forced movements are being carried out, these parameters are continuously measured, and the differences between the measured values and the maximum allowed values are calculated; the calculations are analyzed, producing control signals: ‘more’, ‘less’ and/or ‘stop the session’.
The equipment in this prototype-invention includes a base and drive and manipulation devices mounted on the base, the drive control device, linked with the drive, a processor, the output of which is linked with the drive via sensors of the patient's physiological parameters, an electric power source and a required-air source, and a system of epv. The actuating devices of the drive are made in the form of blocks of inflatable chambers, linked with one another via the epv system, equipped with electric power and required-air sources, interconnected respectively with the drive control, and sensors of real laws of motion (of the patient's body it seems) and sensors of physiological parameters.
All the known methods, including the prototype-method, have drawbacks typical of all passive apparato-therapies, the most significant of which is insufficient registration of the patient's own activity. Using the parameters listed above, one can judge the patient's state and their psychological comfort quite objectively, but not how effective the rehabilitation process is.